Year 7 Literacy & Numeracy Catch-up Premium
What is catch-up funding?
The ‘catch-up’ premium was formally launched in March 2013 as part of the government’s commitment to providing additional funding to support Year 7 pupils who failed to reach National Curriculum Level 4 in English and/or Mathematics at the end of Key Stage 2.
The initiative involves secondary schools receiving an additional premium of £500 for each ‘catch-up’ pupil. The money is to be used by schools to deliver literacy and/or numeracy support with the aim of bringing ‘catch-up’ pupils up to speed and thus increasing their chances of succeeding at secondary school. The funding is not ring-fenced, allowing schools to use the premium to finance literacy and numeracy schemes, which reflect the needs of their students.
Changes to national assessments at Key Stage 2 now mean that when a student achieves a scaled score in their SATs of below 100, they have not met the expected standard. Catch-up funding is there to support those pupils who did not make the expected standard in Mathematics, Reading, Writing or Grammar Punctuation and Spelling. Budgets are now matched to those from 2015-2016 and adjusted based on the percentage change in the cohort size.